【推荐1】For people, who are interested in sound, the field of sound technology is definitely making noise. In the past, sound engineers worked in the back rooms of recording studios, but many of today’s sound professionals are sharing their knowledge and experience with professionals in other fields to create new products based on the phenomenon we call sound.

Sound can be used as a weapon. Imagine that a police officer is chasing a thief. The thief tries to escape. And the officer can’t let him get away. He pulls out a special device, points it at the suspect, and switches it on. The thief drops to the ground. This new weapon is called a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD, 远程定向声波发射器). It produces a deafening sound so painful that it temporarily disables a person. The noise from the LRAD is directed like a ray of light and travels only into the ears of that person, but it is not deadly.

For those who hunger for some peace and quiet, sound can now create silence. Let’s say you are at the airport, and the little boy on the seat next to you is humming (哼唱) a short commercial song. He hums it over and over again, and you are about to go crazy. Thanks to the Silence Machine, a British invention, you can get rid of the sound without upsetting the boy or his parents. One may wonder how the Silence Machine works. Well, it functions by analyzing the waves of the incoming sound and creating a second set of outgoing waves. The two sets of waves cancel each other out. Simply turn the machine or point it at the target, and your peace and quiet comes back.

Directed sound is a new technology that allows companies to use sound in much the same way spotlights (聚光灯) are used in the theater. A spotlight lights up only one section of a stage; similarly, “spotsound” creates a circle of sound in on targeted area. This can be useful for businesses such as restaurants and stores because it offers a new way to attract customers. Restaurants can offer a choice of music along with the various food choices on the menu, allowing customers more control over the atmosphere in which they are dining. Directed sound is also beginning to appear in shopping centers and even at homes.

【推荐3】Not only does the use of plastic water bottles hurt your wallet, but it also causes pollution, wastes energy (能源), and surprisingly wastes water. Only 23% of the plastic in America ends up in recycling bins (回收垃圾箱), meaning over $1 billion worth of plastic is treated as rubbish a year. Recently, Skipping Rocks Lab has invented a kind of water bottle called Ooho.

Ooho is designed for large outdoor events where a large number plastic bottles are used and frequently left behind as litter. It’s a kind of convenient, clear water bottle that can either be drunk or eaten. To drink it, you can either get rid of the membrane (膜) or tear (撕开) a hole in the membrane with your teeth to pour the water into your mouth. To eat it, you simply put the whole bottle in your mouth. It’s completely tasteless so you needn’t worry about any taste.

The team has been working for the past two years to develop the technology and materials (材料) that are needed to make Ooho. The price hasn’t been decided yet, but it costs about two cents to create a unit, which is cheaper than plastic bottles. The team has also been selling Ooho water bottles in London for the past six months.

Ooho is catching many people’s attention and has raised over $1 million in only three days. It’s mostly being sold at events to interest the buyers while the production machine is getting up and running. It’s quickly making a rise, so keep an eye on these bottles of the future.

【推荐2】Toothpaste (牙膏) tubes with remaining contents have been a headache for many of us. But not, perhaps, for much longer.

In 2012, Kripa Varanasi, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Dave Smith, his PhD student, set up a company called LiquiGlide to produce toothpaste tubes with super-smooth surfaces that promise to deliver every last bit of their contents.

Mibelle Group, a Swiss producer of expensive health-care and beauty products, is the first company to employ the technology to lessen the amount of material left stuck to the insides of containers in its factories when it is time for a clean-up. Now Colgate Palmolive, an American company, has used LiquiGlide's technology for its new toothpaste, called Elixir, which has gone on sale in Europe, though no decision has yet been made about whether it will be applied to other cheaper products.

To produce their slippery containers, Dr. Varanasi and Dr. Smith first carved special patterns and then apply a special liquid to fill the gaps and create super-slippery surfaces on the inner surfaces.

Besides pleasing customers who like to get their money's worth, the new toothpaste tubes can help with recycling. Existing tubes are rarely recycled, not only because they have toothpaste left inside them but also because they are usually made from plastic. Mixed materials of this sort are hard to recycle, and therefore end up being dumped in landfill, or burned.

Despite their latest success with toothpaste, Dr. Varanasi and Dr. Smith have not given up on food products such as yogurt and cheese which usually come in plastic containers. So far, cheaper consumer product makers have not accepted the idea. But the health and beauty industry, where products tend to be more expensive, is interested.

【推荐3】When Jason Esterhuizen was 23 in 2011, an accident blinded him. Now, eight years later, special glasses and a device (装置) inside his brain are   allowing him to make out some details of the world around him.

In 2018, Jason moved from South Africa to California to join in a study that offered the possibility of helping him with his sight. Run by University of California and a company called Second Sight, the study aimed to lest an unusual medical product called Orion.

There are three important pieces to Orion. One part looks like a pair of glasses holding a camera on the person’s head, which also sends wireless signals .The second part is a tiny computer processing (处理) the video from the camera ― that’s where the sight comes from. The third part is a tiny device implanted (植入) directly into the patient’s brain, which is new and different about Orion.

For years, Second Sight and other companies have been working on ways to send visual information into the brains of blind people. Most of the efforts have focused on connecting to the retina (视网膜).By sending electrical signals to the retina, some visual information can be sent to the brain. So far Second Sight has given about 350 people retinal implants.

But a retinal implant wasn’t possible for Jason. That’s why Orion’s direct connection to the brain was especially interesting to him. Dr. Nader Pouratian, who gave Jason his implant, said, “With the system we’re testing now, you don’t even need to have eyes for the device to work.” Jason is one of the six trying out the Orion in the world.

Although Jason still can’t see normally, he can tell dark from light. He says he sees little white dots on a black background, like looking up at the stars at night. “Now I can do things that I couldn’t do before. It’s making my life much easier.”